by Joni Rodgers
“Please don’t cry.”
“And he’s a creative person. An artist, really. Creative people have their moods. You have to understand the artistic temperament.”
“Mother Daubert,” Kiki said, “he was a good boy.”
“He was!” She seized Kiki’s hand. “He was a good boy.”
“Of course.” Kiki tried to pull away, feeling alarmed, trapped by the sigh of the respirator and the unexpected strength of this tiny woman’s grip.
“Why did you have to come back here?” Mother Daubert demanded in a strained whisper.
“Ma’am?”
“Why?” Mother Daubert asked again. “How could you be so stupid and weak?”
“Mother Daubert, I... How can you say that? I—I only—”
“If you’d only gone and never come back. None of this would be happening! He didn’t want to hurt anybody. He was a good boy!”
“Yes, Mother Daubert, he was a good boy.”
“And he was a good man.”
“Yes. Yes, he was a good man,” Kiki affirmed.
“You weren’t afraid of him.”
“No! No, of course not!”
“And he never purposely hurt you, Kalene. Not purposely.”
“Mother Daubert, please stop this ...”
The gentle lady shook her head, her face full of grief and something else Kiki couldn’t even begin to identify.
“Please,” Kiki repeated, standing firm, supporting her belly with one hand. “I don’t want you to remember your son that way. I don’t want my babies to remember their daddy that way. He was a good boy, and he grew up strong and handsome, and that’s how we should always remember him. Now please, please don’t upset yourself any more.”
Mother Daubert nodded and freed another pink tissue, offering one to Kiki. She looked out over the grassy yard, gently pressing instead of wiping the tissue under her eye so as not to smear her makeup. Oscar was leading Chloe by the hand, back toward the breezeway where there was shade and a water fountain. She waved again, and Oscar waved back.
“He’s a good boy,” she said.
Kiki felt nauseated and afraid. The scent of Mother Daubert’s perfume mingled with the antiseptic smell of the hospital hallway. Outside, Oscar tried to lure a squirrel with a walnut shell he’d found on the ground.
“Wayne always loved animals that way,” Mother Daubert said. “I guess that’s why he went into taxidermy. He had such an appreciation for the beauty of living creatures.”
Kiki couldn’t quite follow that line of logic, but she nodded anyway.
“That was his art,” Mother Daubert said.
sha-sigh sha-sigh sha-sigh
“I saw a movie once,” Kiki said after a bit. “There was this guy, see, who was in a car accident, and he got hurt real bad and went into a coma for five years. And then when he came out of it, he was like a whole different person.”
Mother Daubert stood staring at her, lips slightly parted.
“See—before—he was real mean, like a gangster or something, but after he came out of it, he was nice,” Kiki explained. “Only he had amnesia and this big old scar on his head. And I think he might have had telekinetic powers.”
Mother Daubert just stared. Kiki fidgeted with the front of her maternity blouse.
“But other than that, he was a real nice person ... afterward.”
Mother Daubert turned away and stroked Wayne’s arm. She traced his eyebrow with her fingertip.
“I believe you get one chance in this world,” she said finally. “If you throw away the one chance you’re given, then you’re alone. People come. Friends, household help, passing acquaintances—oh, by the dozen, there are people you know. But not one of them knows you. When the person you love is gone, then you know what it is to be alone.”
Her face had fallen to a shadowed painting. Heavy makeup stressed the lines and cracks in her expression and tinted sallow the dark circles beneath her eyes.
“Mother Daubert?” Kiki said gently. “You’re not alone. I’m here.”
She realized as soon as she said it how much it sounded like a big-eyed Precious Sentiments cliche.
“Oh,” Mother Daubert glanced up at Kiki. She seemed surprised to find her still in the room. “Well, that’s very sweet of you, dear. Very sweet. I guess what I meant was ... well, I guess I’m just being silly today. I apologize, dear. I had no business ... I... “
“It’s all right, Mother Daubert. I understand.”
They passed a few more minutes in silence.
“Well,” Kiki stood and tucked her purse under her arm, “I think I’ll run down to the ladies’ room for a minute.”
Heading down the hall, she wished she could just leave, collect Oscar and Chloe, get in the car, and go home, but her bladder was the size of a walnut now, and she knew she’d never make it. She wished Kit would hurry and get back from New Rippy. She wished her mama wasn’t too sick to talk on the phone. She wished, oh, she wished she had just one flat, smoothfaced card—an ATM card or a VISA. She longed for that unconditional love, that sheltered feeling of friendly clerks and universal acceptance.
At their favorite little toy store in Old Town Spring, that nice lady looked down at Kiki with surprise and disappointment as Chloe begged for a porcelain doll for her collection. Chloe didn’t know yet that the wind god had whisked away all those sweet china faces and ruffled Edwardian frocks. The entire dolly society had flown away with all other evidence of the life they’d left behind. Kiki had no money to buy the doll for Chloe and no experience at explaining that fact to her.
“It costs a lot of money, Chloe,” she struggled. “I don’t have that much money today.”
“That’s okay,” Chloe smiled up at her, not upset yet, thinking her mommy simply needed a little reminder of where things come from. “You can use a credit card.”
Perhaps, if Kiki could have traced for her the backward process, the waning of what had been them together and her by herself, it might have made sense, how it had all come to nothing now. If she could have told Chloe that when she met Wayne, she was still working, that she and Kit were still performing together at country clubs and upscale bars in nice hotels. She was earning her own money. Driving her own car. Saying her own name. Right up until the day they stood on Grandaddy Daubert’s back porch, reading their handwritten wedding vows from three-by-five-inch cards.
“Husband, I will nurture this precious seed you have planted inside me, and I myself will grow in the fertile ground of your love.”
But she somehow started shrinking instead. Her first pregnancy made her feel vulnerable. Just as she reached the world of womanhood, she became childish again, giving up her strength to his solicitude, her power to his protection, and so it went over the years, until even her voice was confined inside a metal box on the entertainment center.
“I promise you, my lovely wife, that I will love you and be faithful to you and gently cherish you and always provide you a good home.”
But one night Chelsea, the seventeen-year-old babysitter, needed a ride home, and his faithfulness was gone. And then Kiki lost a baby because his gentleness was gone. One by one, even the small promises disappeared, until all she had left of her covenant with him was the accordion sheath of plastic faces hoarded in her handbag, the smooth magnetic strips that confirmed he was still her caretaker, if no longer her love. They imprinted on her a code of acceptance, issued a statement of her place in the world.
Mrs. Wayne Daubert, Jr.: Approved.
Standing in the toy store, looking around this plateau in her life, Kiki felt a longing and aloneness such as she had never known.
“I can’t use a card, sweetie,” she whispered. “I don’t have one.”
“Well then,” Chloe darkened, “you can write a check.”
“I’m sorry, Tweetie Bird ...”
And then the reality set in, and the grieving began.
Kit had never known Neeva to look so beautiful.
Her widow’s peak
ascended in a soft wave from her forehead, her cheeks were gently flushed, and her soft smile blushed with a careful touch of lipstick. She was wearing a pastel blue skirt suit instead of her traditional white work shirt and khaki Bermudas, and there was an opening yellow rose in her hand.
That was a nice touch, Neeva’s sister Alice commented, as they lowered the coffin’s sleek black lid, but Kit was remembering something she’d read one time about how they glue your lips shut. The morticians. She was wondering if they’d glued Neeva’s lips shut. Wondering if they’d argued over who would get to do it.
Butch and Mel stood in their dark suits, dry-eyed and grim, with Otto weeping between them.
“Fifty-four years,” he sobbed, “fifty-four years.”
Kit didn’t know if he was mourning the duration of their marriage or the fact of its passing. When it came time for each person to pass by the open casket, he gazed down at his late wife and bawled loudly, “There’s so much to say.” But then he sat down without saying anything.
It bothered Kit how he bent down to kiss Neeva’s cheek. He never would have dared that when she was alive and kicking. She’d have bitten the nose right off his face.
Kit and Mel had both noticed, as soon as they arrived in New Rippy, how Otto’s hearing had miraculously regenerated. He seemed reborn, making his own coffee and talking with Mel about airplanes and fishing and the Falcon. He was the life of every conversation and stood at the head of the funeral parlor receiving line, shaking hands with old friends and being hugged by the neighbor ladies and telling everyone the story of how Neeva had been cutting pieces for Mitzi’s birthday quilt when she looked over at him and said, “Did you hear me?” and then fell right down dead, the scissors still in her hand.
The chaplain was a young man. The funeral parlor had him on a list of references for people who didn’t go to church during their lifetime and weren’t about to start now.
According to Mel, Neeva had been a Southern Baptist early in her life, doggedly devout and inviolately unforgiving— “Calvinism in a chignon,” he said. But when Mel was about Cooper’s age, she’d suddenly done a complete one-eighty, refusing to set foot in the First Baptist sanctuary again, and from then on was harsh and judgmental simply for her own entertainment.
Kit remembered her saying once that she wanted her funeral to be in a bowling alley. She said the league girls should each take a turn rolling the ball at her urn of ashes.
“I’d like to share with you a portion of the thirty-first book of Proverbs,” the chaplain said. He took a sip of water and lifted his Bible in his hand.
“‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her ... she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life...”‘
Mitzi crawled onto Kit’s lap, and the cool of her soft round cheek made Kit realize that her own face was burning.
‘“She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household...
She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms...
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hand to the needy...
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.’”
Kit and Mel exchanged an uncomfortable glance.
‘“She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Her children shall rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her...”‘
Otto honked loudly into his handkerchief.
‘“Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.’”
Okay, then, Kit prayed silently, give her the fruit of her hands. At least give her that.
But there was no mention of Shankow-Turner or the B-29’s. The young chaplain had never met Neeva, and Kit wondered if anyone else in the room knew her any better than he did. As he delivered the brief, generic eulogy, a desolation swept over Kit, a bereavement. This is what it is to be dead, she understood. To be never met, never even known well enough to be forgotten. To ask, “Did you hear me?” To glide past and past as the banquet table decayed to dust.
They traveled with their lights on to the graveyard, and then Kit made Mel stop at the store on the way back to the house so she could buy plastic plates and cups and some paper napkins.
She hovered quietly between the dining room and kitchen, making coffee, slicing bundt cake, shushing the children, and fetching fresh tea bags for the bowling league ladies, until all the customary baked beans and lemon bars and hot dishes of death had eroded to crumbs and leftovers. She plastic-wrapped and aluminum-foiled things to send home with people, making sure Mel thanked each one of them for coming as they migrated out into the quiet street.
“Is there anything we can do to make things more comfortable for you, Otto?” Kit asked after the last neighbor left, but she immediately regretted it.
“Well, things around here need to get cleaned out,” he said. “That would be something for you girls to do, I guess.”
Kit and Marnie exchanged horrified glances when Aunt Alice concurred, “Yes, I think that’s something for the daughters to do.”
Mel tried to suggest that maybe they could come back in a couple weeks, and Butch pointed out that Marnie was in no condition to be doing heavy housework, but Otto was adamant that all Neeva’s things had to be removed from her room, and indeed, from every room in the house, in order for him to stay there by himself. When it came down to the point that the old guy was either going to have his way or come home with one of them, Butch and Mel stopped short of volunteering to do it themselves.
“Kit, I hate to do this to you,” Marnie pulled her aside in the kitchen, “but I’ve been having contractions since we got back from the cemetery.”
“Oh, Lord! Are you okay?” Kit put her hand on Marnie’s elbow and pulled a chair across the linoleum. “Did you tell Butch?”
“No. He’s not having a very good day. I was hoping it might just be Braxton-Hicks, you know?”
“Do you want Mel to drive you?”
“Would you mind?” Marnie hedged. “Butch had a couple martinis earlier and ... oh. Oh, boy. Here it goes again.”
“How far apart are they?”
“About five minutes,” Marnie checked her watch and winced at the internal pressure. “Oh, dang! I can’t believe this is happening today.”
“It’s all right. Just breathe. Relax.” Kit stroked Marnie’s shoulder, holding her wrist so she could follow the sweep of the watch’s fine gold second hand. “How is it?” she asked after another minute.
“Over. It’s over.”
“That was a pretty good one. I think you’re going for it.”
Marnie nodded. She looked haggard already, and knowing what sort of evening lay ahead for both of them, Kit drew her sister-in-law into a hug.
“It’s okay, Marnie. You sit tight while I get Mel. It’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“C’mon now,” Kit coaxed, setting her hands on Marnie’s shoulders. “You can’t be sad. You’re having a baby!”
“Yeah,” Marnie still sounded uncertain, but she smiled. “I guess I am!”
“Hey, can I tell you a secret?”
“Oh, Kit! Are you?” Marnie cried, and Kit nodded. “Kit, that’s wonderful.”
“Yeah,” Kit said, “I guess so.”
And she realized that, even under the circumstances, she couldn’t be completely sad, either. Like her other babies, the one inside her was a little time bomb, ticking with the combined promises of disaster and delight, melancholy and mayhem, sleepless nights, joyful days, and eighty years of God only knew what.
“You guess so?” Marnie said gently.
“It’s just—we didn’t exactly plan it.”
“Us either. I hope Mel is handli
ng it better than Butch did.”
“Oh, Mel’s on cloud nine. He’s gone absolutely sappy.” Kit laughed a little now, though it tore a hole in her heart every time he knelt down in front of her to press his cheek to her stomach or said how much he loved her or surreptitiously deposited another effusive love letter in the mail box.
“So, there you go,” she sighed.
“Life goes on,” Marnie agreed.
As they drove away in the rain, Kit waved from the window. Then she turned toward the kitchen, her heart sinking. It was filthy, lacking even the superficial skiff of housekeeping Neeva breezed over it before family visits. Kit rolled up her sleeves and looked under the sink for trash bags.
She decided to attack the refrigerator first. She opened the door and peered inside, half expecting to find Jimmy Hoffa in there. It was wedged full with unidentifiable remains mummified in foil or entombed in Tupperware, almost-empty bottles and corroded jars, fuzzy cheese, green lunch meat, a drawerful of slimy produce.
Kit closed the door and decided to attack the cupboards first. When she unlatched the one at her feet, a large brown roach startled out and scuttered across the floor. Kit shrieked, cussed, stomped on it, and wiped her shoe on the dingy braided rug.
She decided to attack the bedroom first.
Neeva’s door creaked open, allowing the same sad sigh with which her coffin had creaked shut. The blinds were drawn, the windows closed, and Kit was afraid to open them, even though the stench of cigarette smoke was overpowering.
She crept to the dresser and eased the top drawer open. Bras. Dozens of them. All white. She extracted a trash bag from a cardboard box and gingerly dropped them in, one by one, discovering a trove of unlikely items among the strained elastic and voluminous cups. A bag of jelly beans. An alarm clock. A thick-handled plastic spoon. A Band-Aid box full of nickels. A petrified Hostess Ding-Dong wrapped in cellophane and secured with Scotch tape.
The second drawer was full of underwear. All pink. There were five or six old threadbare panties, obviously laundered and worn for years, and sixteen identical packages of new ones, ordered from J. C. Penney, apparently over the course of thirty years, but never opened. Beside those were several authoritative girdles, another Ding-Dong, a slide rule, something that looked like a wooden turkey baster, a Roget’s Thesaurus, a letter opener with John Wayne’s head on the handle, and a Danish Butter Cookie tin.